7. The Syllabus

{276} NOW I come to the Syllabus of "Errors," the
publication of which has been exclaimed against in England as such a
singular enormity, and especially by Mr. Gladstone. The condemnation of
theological statements which militate against the Catholic Faith is of
long usage in the Church. Such was the condemnation of the heresies of
Wickliffe in the Council of Constance; such those of Huss, of Luther, of
Baius, of Jansenius; such the condemnations which were published by
Sextus IV., Innocent XI., Clement XI., Benedict XIV., and other Popes.
Such condemnations are no invention of Pius IX. The Syllabus is a
collection of such erroneous propositions as he has noted during his
Pontificate; there are eighty of them.

What does the word "Syllabus" mean? A collection; the
French translation calls it a "Resumé;"—a Collection of
what? I have already said, of propositions,—propositions which the
Pope in his various Allocutions, Encyclicals, and like documents, since
he has been Pope, has pronounced to be Errors. Who gathered the
propositions out of these Papal documents, and put them together in one?
We do not know; all we know is that, by the Pope's command, this
Collection of Errors was sent by his Foreign Minister to the Bishops.
He, {277} Cardinal Antonelli, sent to them at the same time the
Encyclical of December, 1864, which is a document of dogmatic authority.
The Cardinal says, in his circular to them, that the Pope ordered him to
do so. The Pope thought, he says, that perhaps the Bishops had not seen
some of his Allocutions, and other authoritative letters and speeches of
past years; in consequence the Pope had had the Errors which, at one
time or other he had therein noted, brought together into one, and that
for the use of the Bishops.

Such is the Syllabus and its object. There is not a word in it of the
Pope's own writing; there is nothing in it at all but the Erroneous
Propositions themselves—that is, except the heading "A Syllabus,
containing the principal Errors of our times, which are noted in the
Consistorial Allocutions, in the Encyclicals, and in other Apostolical
Letters of our most Holy Lord, Pope Pius IX." There is one other
addition—viz., after each Error a reference is given to the
Allocution, Encyclical, or other document in which it is proscribed.

The Syllabus, then, is to be received with profound submission, as
having been sent by the Pope's authority to the Bishops of the world. It
certainly comes to them with his indirect extrinsic sanction; but
intrinsically, and viewed in itself, it is nothing more than a digest of
certain Errors made by an anonymous writer. There would be nothing on
the face of it, to show that the Pope had ever seen it, page by page,
unless the "Imprimatur" implied in the Cardinal's letter had
been an evidence of this. It has no mark or seal put upon it which gives
it a direct relation to the Pope. {278} Who is its author? Some select
theologian or high official doubtless; can it be Cardinal Antonelli
himself? No surely: anyhow it is not the Pope, and I do not see my way
to accept it for what it is not. I do not speak as if I had any
difficulty in recognizing and condemning the Errors which it catalogues,
did the Pope himself bid me; but he has not as yet done so, and he
cannot delegate his Magisterium to another. I wish with St.
Jerome to "speak with the Successor of the Fisherman and the
Disciple of the Cross." I assent to that which the Pope propounds
in faith and morals, but it must be he speaking officially, personally,
and immediately, and not any one else, who has a hold over me. The
Syllabus is not an official act, because it is not signed, for instance,
with "Datum Romæ, Pius P.P. IX.," or "sub annulo
Piscatoris," or in some other way; it is not a personal, for he
does not address his Venerabiles Fratres," or "Dilecto Filio,"
or speak as "Pius Episcopus;" it is not an immediate, for it
comes to the Bishops only through the Cardinal Minister of State.

If, indeed, the Pope should ever make that anonymous compilation
directly his own, then of course I should bow to it and accept it as
strictly his. He might have done so; he might do so still; again, he
might issue a fresh list of Propositions in addition, and pronounce them
to be Errors, and I should take that condemnation to be of dogmatic
authority, because I believe him appointed by his Divine Master to
determine in the detail of faith and morals what is true and what is
false. But such an act of his he would formally authenticate; he would
speak {279} in his own name, as Leo X. or Innocent XI. did, by Bull or
Letter Apostolic. Or, if he wished to speak less authoritatively, he
would speak through a Sacred Congregation; but the Syllabus makes no
claim to be acknowledged as the word of the Pope. Moreover, if the Pope
drew up that catalogue, as it may be called, he would have pronounced in
it some definite judgment on the propositions themselves. What gives
cogency to this remark is, that a certain number of Bishops and
theologians, when a Syllabus was in contemplation, did wish for such a
formal act on the part of the Pope, and in consequence they drew up for
his consideration the sort of document on which, if he so willed, he
might suitably stamp his infallible sanction; but he did not accede to
their prayer. This composition is contained in the "Recueil des
Allocutions," &c., and is far more than a mere
"collection of errors." It is headed, "Theses ad
Apostolicam Sedem delatæ cum censuris," &c., and each
error from first to last has the ground of its condemnation marked upon
it. There are sixty-one of them. The first is "impia, injuriosa
religioni," &c.; the second is "complexivè sumpta, falsa,"
&c.; the third the same; the fourth, "hæretica," and so
on, the epithets affixed having a distinct meaning, and denoting various
degrees of error. Such a document, unlike the Syllabus, has a
substantive character.

Here I am led to interpose a remark;—it is plain, then, that there
are those near, or with access, to the Holy Father, who would, if they
could, go much further in the way of assertion and command, than the
divine Assistentia, which overshadows him, wills or permits; so
{280} that his acts and his words on doctrinal subjects must be
carefully scrutinized and weighed, before we can be sure what really he
has said. Utterances which must be received as coming from an Infallible
Voice are not made every day, indeed they are very rare; and those which
are by some persons affirmed or assumed to be such, do not always turn
out what they are said to be; nay, even such as are really dogmatic must
be read by definite rules and by traditional principles of
interpretation, which are as cogent and unchangeable as the Pope's own
decisions themselves. What I have to say presently will illustrate this
truth; meanwhile I use the circumstance which has led to my mentioning
it, for another purpose here. When intelligence which we receive from
Rome startles and pains us from its seemingly harsh or extreme
character, let us learn to have some little faith and patience, and not
take for granted that all that is reported is the truth. There are those
who wish and try to carry measures and declare they have carried, when
they have not carried them. How many strong things, for instance, have
been reported with a sort of triumph on one side and with irritation and
despondency on the other, of what the Vatican Council has done; whereas
the very next year after it, Bishop Fessler, the Secretary General of
the Council, brings out his work on "True and False
Infallibility," reducing what was said to be so monstrous to its
true dimensions. When I see all this going on, those grand lines in the
Greek Tragedy always rise on my lips—

[Oupote tan Dios harmonian
thnaton
parexiasi boulai],—

{281} and still more the consolation given us by a Divine Speaker
that, though the swelling sea is so threatening to look at, yet there is
One who rules it and says, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no
further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed!"

But to return:—the Syllabus then has no dogmatic force; it
addresses us, not in its separate portions, but as a whole, and is to be
received from the Pope by an act of obedience, not of faith, that
obedience being shown by having recourse to the original and
authoritative documents, (Allocutions and the like,) to which it
pointedly refers. Moreover, when we turn to those documents, which are
authoritative, we find the Syllabus cannot even be called an echo of the
Apostolic Voice; for, in matters in which wording is so important, it is
not an exact transcript of the words of the Pope, in its account of the
errors condemned,—just as is natural in what is professedly an index
for reference.

Mr. Gladstone indeed wishes to unite the Syllabus to that Encyclical
which so moved him in December, 1864, and says that the Errors noted in
the Syllabus are all brought under the infallible judgment pronounced on
certain errors specified in the Encyclical. This is an untenable
assertion. He says of the Pope and of the Syllabus, p. 20: "These
are not mere opinions of the Pope himself, nor even are they opinions
which he might paternally recommend to the pious consideration of the
faithful. With the promulgation of his opinions is unhappily combined,
in the Encyclical Letter which virtually, though not expressly,
includes the whole, a command to all his spiritual children
(from which command {282} we, the disobedient children, are in no way
excluded) to hold them," and Mr. Gladstone appeals in proof
of this to the language of the Encyclical; but let us see what that
language is. The Pope speaks thus, as Mr. Gladstone himself quotes him:
"All and each of the wrong opinions and doctrines, mentioned one
by one in this Encyclical (hisce litteris), by our
Apostolical authority, we reprobate, &c." He says then, as
plainly as words can speak, that the wrong opinions which in this
passage he condemns, are specified in the Encyclical, not outside
of it; and, when we look into the earlier part of it, there they are,
about ten of them; there is not a single word in the Encyclical to show
that the Pope in it was alluding to the Syllabus. The Syllabus does not
exist, as far as the language of the Encyclical is concerned. This
gratuitous assumption seems to me marvellously unfair.

The only connexion between the Syllabus and the Encyclical is one
external to them both, the connexion of time and organ; Cardinal
Antonelli sending them both to the Bishops with the introduction of one
and the same letter. In that letter he speaks to the Bishops thus, as I
paraphrase his words [Note 1]:—The
Holy Father sends you {283} by me a list, which he has caused to be
drawn up and printed, of the errors which he has in various formal
documents, in the course of the last eighteen years, noted. With that
list of errors, he is also sending you a new Encyclical, which he has
judged it apropos to write to the Catholic Bishops;—so I send
you both at once."

The Syllabus, then, is a list, or rather an index, of the Pope's
Encyclical or Allocutional "proscriptions," an index raisonné;—(not
alphabetical, as is found, for instance, in Bellarmine's or Lambertini's
works,)—drawn up by the Pope's orders, out of his paternal care for
the flock of Christ, and conveyed to the Bishops through his Minister of
State. But we can no more accept it as de fide, as a dogmatic
document, than any other index or table of contents. Take a parallel
case, mutatis mutandis: Counsel's opinion being asked on a point
of law, he goes to his law books, writes down his answer, and, as
authority, refers his client to 23 George III., c. 5, s. 11; 11
Victoria, c. 12, s. 19, and to Thomas v. Smith, Att. Gen. v.
Roberts, and Jones v. Owen. Who would say that that sheet of
foolscap has force of law, when it was nothing more than a list of
references to the Statutes of the Realm, or Judges' decisions, in which
the Law's voice really was found?

The value of the Syllabus, then, lies in its references; but of these
Mr. Gladstone has certainly availed himself very little. Yet, in order
to see the nature and extent of the blame cast on any proposition of the
Syllabus, it is absolutely necessary to turn out the passage of the
Allocution, Encyclical, or other document, in which the {284} error is
noted; for the wording of the errors which the Syllabus contains is to
be interpreted by its references. Instead of this Mr. Gladstone uses
forms of speech about the Syllabus which only excite in me fresh wonder.
Indeed, he speaks upon these ecclesiastical subjects generally in a
style in which priests and parsons are accused by their enemies of
speaking concerning geology. For instance, the Syllabus, as we have
seen, is a list or index; but he calls it "extraordinary
declarations," p. 21. How can a list of errors be a series of
Pontifical "Declarations"?

However, perhaps he would say that, in speaking of
"Declarations," he was referring to the authoritative
allocutions, &c., which I have accused him of neglecting. With all
my heart; but then let us see how the statements in these allocations
fulfil the character he gives of them. He calls them "Extraordinary
declarations on personal and private duty," p. 21, and
"stringent condemnations," p. 19. Now, I certainly must grant
that some are stringent, but only some. One of the most severe that I
have found among them is that in the Apostolic Letter of June 10, 1851,
against some heretic priest out at Lima, whose elaborate work in six
volumes against the Curia Romana, is pronounced to be in its various
statements "scandalous, rash, false, schismatical, injurious to the
Roman Pontiffs and Ecumenical Councils, impious and heretical." It
well deserved to be called by these names, which are not terms of abuse,
but each with its definite meaning; and, if Mr. Gladstone, in speaking
of the condemnations, had confined his epithet "stringent" to
it, no one would have complained of him. And {285} another severe
condemnation is that of the works of Professor Nuytz. But let us turn to
some other of the so-called condemnations, in order to ascertain whether
they answer to his general description of them.

1. For instance, take his own 16th (the 77th of the "erroneous
Propositions"), that, "It is no longer expedient that the
Catholic Religion should be established to the exclusion of all
others." When we turn to the Allocution, which is the ground of its
being put into the Syllabus, what do we find there? First, that the Pope
was speaking, not of States universally, but of one particular State,
Spain, definitely Spain; secondly, that he was not noting the erroneous
proposition directly, or categorically, but was protesting against the
breach in many ways of the Concordat on the part of the Spanish
government; further, that he was not referring to any work containing
the said proposition, nor contemplating any proposition at all; nor, on
the other hand, using any word of condemnation whatever, nor using any
harsher terms of the Government in question than an expression of
"his wonder and distress." And again, taking the Pope's
remonstrance as it stands, is it any great cause of complaint to
Englishmen, who so lately were severe in their legislation upon
Unitarians, Catholics, unbelievers, and others, that the Pope merely
does not think it expedient for every state from this time
forth to tolerate every sort of religion on its territory,
and to disestablish the Church at once? for this is all that he denies.
As in the instance in the foregoing section, he does but deny a
universal, which the "erroneous proposition" asserts without
any explanation. {286}

2. Another of Mr. Gladstone's "stringent Condemnations"
(his 18th) is the Pope's denial of the proposition that "the Roman
Pontiff can and ought to come to terms with Progress, Liberalism, and
the New Civilization." I turn to the Allocation of March 18, 1861,
and find there no formal condemnation of this Proposition at all. The
Allocution is a long argument to the effect that the moving
parties in that Progress, Liberalism, and New Civilization, make use of
it so seriously to the injury of the Faith and the Church, that it is
both out of the power, and contrary to the duty, of the Pope to come to
terms with them. Nor would those prime movers themselves differ from him
here; certainly in this country it is the common cry that Liberalism is
and will be the Pope's destruction, and they wish and mean it so to be.
This Allocution on the subject is at once beautiful, dignified, and
touching: and I cannot conceive how Mr. Gladstone should make stringency
his one characteristic of these condemnations, especially when after all
there is here no condemnation at all.

3. Take, again, Mr. Gladstone's 15th—"That the abolition of
Temporal Power of the Popedom would be highly advantageous to the
Church." Neither can I find in the Pope's Allocution any formal
condemnation whatever of this proposition, much less a
"stringent" one. Even the Syllabus does no more in the case of
any one of the eighty, than to call it an "error;" and what
the Pope himself says of this particular error is only this:—"We
cannot but in particular warn and reprove (monere et
redarguere) those who applaud the decree by which the Roman Pontiff has
been despoiled of all the {287} honour and dignity of his civil rule,
and assert that the said decree, more than anything else, conduces to
the liberty and prosperity of the Church itself."—Alloc.,
April 20, 1849.

4. Take another of his instances, the 17th, the "error"
that "in countries called Catholic the public exercise of other
religions may laudably be allowed." I have had occasion to mention
already his mode of handling the Latin text of this proposition—viz.,
that whereas the men who were forbidden the public exercise of their
religion were foreigners, who had no right to be in a country not their
own at all, and might fairly have conditions imposed upon them during
their stay there, nevertheless Mr. Gladstone (apparently through haste)
has left out the word "hominibus illuc immigrantibus," on
which so much turns. Next, as I have observed above, it was only the
sufferance of their public worship, and again of all worships
whatsoever, however many and various, which the Pope blamed; and
further, the Pope's words do not apply to all States, but specially,
and, as far as the Allocution goes, definitely, to New Granada.

However, the point I wish to insist upon here is, that there was in
this case no condemned proposition at all, but it was merely, as in the
case of Spain, an act of the Government which the Pope protested
against. The Pope merely told that Government that that act, and other
acts which they had committed, gave him very great pain; that he had
expected better things of them; that the way they went on was all of a
piece; and they had his best prayers. Somehow, it seems to me strange,
{288} for any one to call an expostulation like this one of a set of
"extraordinary declarations," "stringent
condemnations."

I am convinced that the more the propositions and the references
contained in the Syllabus are examined, the more signally will the
charge break down, brought against the Pope on occasion of it: as to
those Propositions which Mr. Gladstone specially selects, some of them I
have already taken in hand, and but few of them present any difficulty.

5. As to those on Marriage, I cannot follow Mr. Gladstone's meaning
here, which seems to me very confused, and it would be going out of the
line of remark which I have traced out for myself, (and which already is
more extended than I could wish), were I to treat of them [Note
2].

6. His fourth Error, (taken from the Encyclical) that "Papal
judgments and decrees may, without sin, be disobeyed or differed
from," is a denial of the principle of Hooker's celebrated work on
Ecclesiastical Polity, and would be condemned by him as well as by the
Pope. And it is plain to common sense that no society can stand if its
rules are disobeyed. What club or union would not expel members who
refused so to be bound?

7. And the 5th [Note 3], 8th, and
9th propositions are necessarily {289} errors, if the Sketch of Church
Polity drawn out in my former Sections is true, and are necessarily
considered to be such by those, as the Pope, who maintain that Polity.

8. The 10th Error, as others which I have noticed above, is a universal
(that "in the conflict of laws, civil and ecclesiastical, the civil
law should prevail"), and the Pope does but deny a universal.

9. Mr. Gladstone's 11th, which I do not quite understand in his
wording of it, runs thus:—"Catholics can approve of that system
of education for youth which is separated from the Catholic faith and
the Church's power, and which regards the science only of physical
things, and the outlines (fines) of earthly social life alone or at
least primarily." How is this not an "Error"? Surely
there are Englishmen enough who protest against the elimination of
religion from our schools; is such a protest so dire an offence to Mr.
Gladstone?

10. And the 12th Error is this:—That "the science of
philosophy and of morals, also the laws of the State, can and should
keep clear of divine and ecclesiastical authority." This too will
not be anything short of an error in the judgment of great numbers of
our own people. Is Benthamism so absolutely the Truth, that the Pope is
to be denounced because he has not yet become a convert to it?

11. There are only two of the condemnations which really require a
word of explanation; I have already referred to them. One is that of Mr.
Gladstone's sixth Proposition, "Roman Pontiffs and Ecumenical
Councils, have departed from the limits of their power, have {290}
usurped the rights of Princes, and even in defining matters of faith and
morals have erred." These words are taken from the Lima Priest's
book. We have to see then what he means by "the Rights of
Princes," for the proposition is condemned in his sense of
the word. It is a rule of the Church in the condemnation of a book to
state the proposition condemned in the words of the book itself, without
the Church being answerable for those words as employed [Note
4]. I have already referred to this rule in my 5th Section. Now this
priest includes among the rights of Catholic princes that of deposing
Bishops from their sacred Ministry, of determining the impediments to
marriage, of forming Episcopal sees, and of being free from episcopal
authority in spiritual matters. When, then, the Proposition is condemned
"that Popes had usurped the rights of Princes;" what is meant
is, "the so-called rights of Princes," which were really the
rights of the Church, in assuming which there was no usurpation at all.

12. The other proposition, Mr. Gladstone's seventh, the condemnation
of which requires a remark, is this: "The Church has not the power
to employ force (vis inferendæ) nor any temporal power direct or
indirect." {291}

This is one of a series of Propositions found in the work of
Professor Nuytz, entitled, "Juris Ecclesiastici Institutiones,"
all of which are condemned in the Pope's Apostolic Letter of August 22,
1851. Now here "employing force" is not the Pope's phrase but
Professor Nuytz's, and the condemnation is meant to run thus, "It
is an error to say, with Professor Nuytz, that what he calls
'employing force' is not allowable to the Church." That this is the
right interpretation of the "error" depends of course on a
knowledge of the Professor's work, which I have never had an opportunity
of seeing; but here I will set down what the received doctrine of the
Church is on ecclesiastical punishments, as stated in a work of the
highest authority, since it comes to us with letters of approval from
Gregory XVI. and Pius IX.

"The opinion," says Cardinal Soglia, "that the
coercive power divinely bestowed upon the Church consists in the
infliction of spiritual punishments alone, and not in corporal or
temporal, seems more in harmony with the gentleness of the Church.
Accordingly I follow their judgment, who withdraw from the Church the
corporal sword, by which the body is destroyed or blood is shed. Pope
Nicholas thus writes: 'The Church has no sword but the spiritual. She
does not kill, but gives life, hence that well-known saying, 'Ecclesia
abhorret a sanguine.' But the lighter punishments, though temporal and
corporal, such as shutting up in a monastery, prison, flogging, and
others of the same kind, short of effusion of blood, the Church jure
suo can inflict."—(Institut. Jur., pp. 167-8, Paris.) {292}

And the Cardinal quotes the words of Fleury "The Church has
enjoined on penitent sinners almsgivings, fastings, and other corporal
inflictions ... Augustine speaks of beating with sticks, as practised by
the Bishops, after the manner of masters in the case of servants,
parents in the case of children and school-masters in that of scholars.
Abbots flogged monks in the way of paternal and domestic chastisement
... Imprisonment for a set time or for life is mentioned among canonical
penances; priests and other clerics, who had been deposed for their
crimes, being committed to prison in order that they might pass the time
to come in penance for their crime, which thereby was withdrawn from the
memory of the public."

But now I have to answer one question. If what I have said is
substantially the right explanation to give to the drift and contents of
the Syllabus, have not I to account for its making so much noise, and
giving such deep and wide offence on its appearance? It has already been
reprobated by the voice of the world. Is there not, then, some reason at
the bottom of the aversion felt by educated Europe towards it, which I
have not mentioned? This is a very large question to entertain, too
large for this place; but I will say one word upon it.

Doubtless one of the reasons of the excitement and displeasure which
the Syllabus caused and causes so widely, is the number and variety of
the propositions marked as errors, and the systematic arrangement to
which they were subjected. So large and elaborate a work struck the
public mind as a new law, moral, social, and ecclesiastical, {293} which
was to be the foundation of a European code, and the beginning of a new
world, in opposition to the social principles of the 19th century; and
there certainly were persons in high station who encouraged this idea.
When this belief was once received, it became the interpretation of the
whole Collection through the eighty Propositions, of which it recorded
the erroneousness; as if it had for its object in all its portions one
great scheme of aggression. Then, when the public mind was definitively
directed to the examination of these erroneous Theses, they were
sure to be misunderstood, from their being read apart from the context,
occasion, and drift of each. They had been noted as errors in the Pope's
Encyclicals and Allocutions in the course of the preceding eighteen
years, and no one had taken any notice of them; but now, when they were
brought all together, they made a great sensation. Why were they brought
together, except for some purpose sinister and hostile to society? and
if they themselves were hard to understand, still more so, and doubly so
was their proscription.

Another circumstance, which I am not theologian enough to account
for, is this,—that the wording of many of the erroneous propositions,
as they are drawn up in the Syllabus, gives an apparent breadth to the
matter condemned which is not found in the Pope's own words in his
Allocutions and Encyclicals. Not that really there is any difference
between the Pope's words and Cardinal Antonelli's, for (as I have shown
in various instances) what the former says in the concrete, the latter
does but repeat in the abstract. Or, to speak {294} logically, when the
Pope enunciates as true the particular affirmative, "Spain ought to
keep up the establishment of the Catholic Religion," then (since
its contradictory is necessarily false) the Cardinal declares, "To
say that no State should keep up the establishment of the Catholic
Religion is an error." But there is a dignity and beauty in the
Pope's own language which the Cardinal's abstract Syllabus cannot have,
and this gave to opponents an opportunity to declaim against the Pope,
which opportunity was in no sense afforded by what he said himself.

Then, again, it must be recollected, in connexion with what I have
said, that theology is a science, and a science of a special kind; its
reasoning, its method, its modes of expression, and its language are all
its own. Every science must be in the hands of a comparatively few
persons—that is, of those who have made it a study. The courts of law
have a great number of rules in good measure traditional; so has the
House of Commons, and, judging by what one reads in the public prints,
men must have a noviceship there before they can be at perfect ease in
their position. In like manner young theologians, and still more those
who are none, are sure to mistake in matters of detail; indeed a really
first-rate theologian is rarely to be found. At Rome the rules of
interpreting authoritative documents are known with a perfection which
at this time is scarcely to be found elsewhere. Some of these rules,
indeed, are known to all priests; but even this general knowledge is not
possessed by laymen, much less by Protestants, however able and
experienced in their own several {295} lines of study or profession. One
of those rules I have had several times occasion to mention. In the
censure of books, which offend against doctrine or discipline, it is a
common rule to take sentences out of them in the author's own words,
whether those are words in themselves good or bad, and to affix some
note of condemnation to them in the sense in which they occur in the
book in question. Thus it may happen that even what seems at first sight
a true statement, is condemned for being made the shelter of an error;
for instance: "Faith justifies when it works," or "There
is no religion where there is no charity," may be taken in a good
sense; but each proposition is condemned in Quesnell, because it is
false as he uses it.

A further illustration of the necessity of a scientific education in
order to understand the value of Propositions, is afforded by a
controversy which has lately gone on among us as to the validity of
Abyssinian Orders. In reply to a document urged on one side of the
question, it was allowed on the other, that, "if that document was
to be read in the same way as we should read any ordinary judgment, the
interpretation which had been given to it was the most obvious and
natural." "But it was well known," it was said, "to
those who are familiar with the practical working of such decisions,
that they are only interpreted with safety in the light of certain
rules, which arise out of what is called the stylus curiæ."
And then some of these rules were given; first, "that to understand
the real meaning of a decision, no matter how clearly set forth, we
should know the nature of the difficulty or dubium, as it was
{296} understood by the tribunal that had to decide upon it. Next,
nothing but the direct proposition, in its nudest and severest sense, as
distinguished from indirect propositions, the grounds of the decision,
or implied statements, is ruled by the judgment. Also, if there is
anything in the wording of a decision which appears inconsistent with
the teaching of an approved body of theologians, &c., the decision
is to be interpreted so as to leave such teaching intact;" and so
on [Note 5]. It is plain that the
view thus opened upon us has further bearings than that for which I make
use of it here.

These remarks on scientific theology apply also of course to its
language. I have employed myself in illustration in framing a sentence,
which would be plain enough to any priest, but I think would perplex any
Protestant. I hope it is not of too light a character to introduce here.
We will suppose then a theologian to write as follows:—"Holding,
as we do, that there is only material sin in those who, being invincibly
ignorant, reject the truth, therefore in charity we hope that they have
the future portion of formal believers, as considering that by virtue
of their good faith, though not of the body of the faithful, they
implicitly and interpretatively believe what they seem to
deny." Now let us consider what sense would this statement convey
to the mind of a member of some Reformation Society or Protestant
League? He would read it as follows, and consider it all the more
insidious and dangerous for its being so very unintelligible:—"Holding,
as we do, that there is {297} only a very considerable sin in those who
reject the truth out of contumacious ignorance, therefore in charity we
hope that they have the future portion of nominal Christians, as
considering, that by the excellence of their living faith, though not in
the number of believers, they believe without any hesitation, as
interpreters [of Scripture?] what they seem to deny."

Now, considering that the Syllabus was intended for the Bishops, who
would be the interpreters of it, as the need arose, to their people, and
it got bodily into English newspapers even before it was received at
many an episcopal residence, we shall not be surprised at the commotion
which accompanied its publication.

I have spoken of the causes intrinsic to the Syllabus, which have led
to misunderstandings about it. As to external, I can be no judge myself
as to what Catholics who have means of knowing are very decided in
declaring, the tremendous power of the Secret Societies. It is enough to
have suggested here, how a wide-spread organization like theirs might
malign and frustrate the most beneficial acts of the Pope. One matter I
had information of myself from Rome at the time when the Syllabus had
just been published, before there was yet time to ascertain how it would
be taken by the world at large. Now, the Rock of St. Peter on its summit
enjoys a pure and serene atmosphere, but there is a great deal of Roman malaria
at the foot of it. While the Holy Father was in great earnestness and
charity addressing the Catholic world by his Cardinal Minister, there
were circles of light-minded men in his {298} city who were laying bets
with each other whether the Syllabus would "make a row in
Europe" or not. Of course it was the interest of those who betted
on the affirmative side to represent the Pope's act to the greatest
disadvantage; and it was very easy to kindle a flame in the mass of
English and other visitors at Rome which with a very little nursing was
soon strong enough to take care of itself.

2. I have observed on them in Postscript on § 7,
infr. pp. 368-370.Return to text

3. Father Coleridge, in his Sermon on "The
Abomination of Desolation," observes that, whereas Proposition 5th
speaks of "jura," Mr. Gladstone translates "civil
jura." Vid. also the "Month" for December, but above all
Mgr. Dupanloup's works on the general subject.Return to text